When arriving at a fire scene, a fireman customarily jumps from the rear of a fire engine adjacent to a hydrant and pulls a length of hose from the rear of the engine, looping it around the base of the hydrant, while the fire engine, upon receiving a signal from the hydrant man, drives away from the hydrant to pull the hose from its storage bed.
Depending upon how the hose is stored in the storage bed of the fire engine, the hydrant man may have at hand a male or female hose coupling or fitting when he jumps from the fire engine.
In any case, the hydrant man removes a cap from the hydrant and opens it for a brief flushing of any foreign matter. Following this, the hydrant man either prepares to connect the hose to the hydrant outlet, or assists in connecting a second pumper to the hydrant as a booster.
He cannot carry out any of the above procedures without the proper tools being immediately at hand. These tools consist of an adjustable hydrant wrench, two hose spanner wrenches, a double male adapter and a double female adapter. These hose adapters are necessary to accommodate the situation where the end of the hose pulled from the fire engine by the hydrant man carries a male or female coupling, the coupling type being unpredictable in advance.
Obviously, the above five essential tools must be easily accessible to the hydrant man if serious delays in connecting the hose to the hydrant are to be avoided. At present, there is no standard or universal method of maintaining the tools together in a convenient, readily accessible and unitized manner. Practice is somewhat varied. Brackets are sometimes provided to support each tool separately, often at different locations on the fire engine. The fireman at the hydrant must quickly collect these tools and deal with an armful of tools when they are separately stored. Occasionally, one tool may be missing from its bracket and located somewhere else on the fire engine, resulting in valuable time being lost while searching for the tool.
In other cases, the tools may be strapped or tied together and attached as a bundle to the hose or simply hung at some random location on the fire engine. This latter procedure can be damaging to the finish of the fire engine.
The present invention has for its objective to provide a complete, convenient and practical solution to the above problems and awkward practices of the prior art. In accordance with the invention, the five essential tools are assembled together as a unit, and the unit is supported or stored at a single location on the fire engine so that it can be picked up conveniently with one hand by the hydrant fireman. Precious time is saved at the fire scene in making the hose hook-up with the hydrant and all fumbling and searching for individual tools, untying ropes or releasing straps from tools is eliminated.
The preassembled tools, as a unit, are placed on a simple mounting bracket at a predetermined fixed location on the fire engine. The mounting bracket contains two vertically spaced upturned support elements which engage the assembled tools at two locations to support them securely while allowing quick access, removal and separation of the tools at the fire scene.
The mounting bracket can be secured to a vertical surface of the fire engine or can be secured to a stanchion mounted on the running board. The results in terms of convenience and security are the same in either case.
Other features and advantages of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art during the course of the following detailed description.